


love-lilac

by jelly_spine



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-26
Updated: 2017-12-26
Packaged: 2019-02-20 15:32:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,934
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13149621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jelly_spine/pseuds/jelly_spine
Summary: Donghyuck chooses the wrong moment to run away. (Moonrise Kingdom!au)





	love-lilac

**Author's Note:**

> for a request on tumblr  
> heavily based on wes anderson's movie, moonrise kingdom  
> set in the late 60s, jaehyun/yoonoh's age has been shifted up a bit

All four of the scout boys have their family names embroidered above their left breast pockets. Huang has a bat with nails. Lee has an air rifle. Zhong has a stick with a sock tied around the end and a lighter. Park has a bow and one arrow.

Donghyuck is thoroughly unlucky. Unlucky to run into this bloodthirsty bunch of boys. Unlucky to have the kind of eye sockets bullies’ knuckles itch for. Unlucky to, as his sister (although Yerim isn’t his real sister—siblings of circumstances, that’s what they are) sometimes says, arouse a murderous instinct in everyone he comes across. Judging by the weapons Huang and Lee and Zhong and Park are wielding, she’s right.

Huang pushes his glasses up to his forehead as if to blur Donghyuck from his sight on purpose and demands, “Where’s our dog, Donghyuck?”

/

Yoonoh sighs. He taps the tip of his pen against his notepad. “When did you last see him?” he asks for what must be the fifth time.

The baker is stubborn. “He isn’t welcome here anymore,” he insists. A girl peeks over his shoulder. Lips painted red. The glint in her eyes identical to the one in her foster brother’s. Even their posture is the same. Loud already in itself, arrogant, _defensive_. Yoonoh could recognise it anywhere.

“Yes,” Yoonoh says, “but we still have to find him. Could you please tell me when you last saw Donghyuck?”

It’s the girl who opens her mouth and replies, “Two days ago. He left a note.”

She goes upstairs to fetch the message. In quirky handwriting sinking lower on the paper as it goes, it says: _Don’t expect me back. Yerim—I would have taken you with me if you had not poured glue into my shoes on Wednesday. Best wishes, Donghyuck._

The girl smiles, like there’s something profoundly amusing about it all. Yoonoh folds the note and slides it into his pocket.

/

Donghyuck’s mouth goes dry. “I don’t know,” he says.

“What did you do to him?” Huang asks. Behind him, Zhong’s playing with the lighter. Zip, snap, flame. Zip, snap, flame.

When Donghyuck stepped over his foster home’s threshold into the glow of the stars frolicking in the navy-blue sky, it was still summer. Since then, the trees’ leaves have blushed deep red. The ground yielding, slippery. Sunlight hollow, pale, sickly. Two days.

Two days, and Donghyuck has seen no sign of the scout patrol’s jack russell terrier. He was crouched over a bush, threading through the leaves in search of blueberries, when the patrol found him. Mouth and fingers smeared purple. Terrified. Why would anyone look for him?

Right as Lee lifts his rifle and, one eye closed, aims smack in the middle of Donghyuck’s forehead, another scout runs to them. This one’s got Lost Lee and a scoutmaster patch sewn on his shirt. Yellow neckerchief tied tight, neat. Campaign hat hanging from his neck.

Donghyuck knows him.

/

Donghyuck first meets Lee Minhyung (or is it the other way around?) when he gets kicked out of the church choir for good. He punches a tenor because the guy calls his parents alcoholics. The priest directing the choir points out the door for him without a word. The click of his worn leather shoes’ soles against the floor echoes softly down the aisle. The angels on the stained glass of the tall windows look at him go. He almost feels embarrassed.

It’s a sweltering day. Donghyuck sits in the church’s shadow, smoking a cigarette he stole from Yerim’s underwear drawer. Three highest buttons of his shirt open. Bruises sprouting over his knuckles. Minhyung stops in front of him. “Good day,” he says.

“Hello,” Donghyuck greets back. He wonders what a scout could want from him, except maybe a bust lip or help with some charity badge.

“Don’t you have practice?” Minhyung follows up, sitting down. “Choir, I mean.”

Donghyuck shakes some ash off his cigarette’s tip, onto the pavement. Asks, “What makes you think so?”

Minhyung shrugs. “Oh, I don’t know. Seen you sing in church a couple of times,” he replies.

“You would probably make a better choir boy than I ever did,” Donghyuck chuckles. It’s true. The women who come through the bakery occasionally babble about how much they would like their daughters to one day marry the young scoutmaster. (“Two loaves, please. What a dashing young man he is! I sure wouldn’t mind cooking him Sunday dinner. Oh, and I’ll also take that apple strudel.”)

“Haven’t got a voice like yours, though.”

Donghyuck blows out grey-blue smoke and looks at Minhyung through it, wondering. Minhyung’s gaze is riveted on the mirages vibrating above the pavement.

/

Minhyung stops in front of Donghyuck. Too pressed to pause to catch his breath, he looks at Lee down the rifle’s barrel and asks, “What are you doing?” His hat’s string strung across his neck moves along with his pulse. The throb of his jugular veins.

“He’s done something to Snoopy,” Park gripes, gesturing with his arrow.

Donghyuck doesn’t have a view of Minhyung’s face, but sees his shoulders tense. Lightly as a guitar getting tuned. “Do you have any proof?” Minhyung questions.

“No,” Huang admits, pursing his lips. As if Donghyuck wasn’t right there, a crimson leaf stuck to his hair, “but this is Lee Donghyuck we’re talking about. Besides, he must have wanted revenge.”

/

“A letter came yesterday,” Lee Minhyung’s mother says, her voice fragmented over the phone. “From the runaway orphan, I mean.”

Yoonoh’s already pulling his coat on and grabbing his car keys. He gets in the car and drives down the little road which meanders from the police station towards the west, around mossy boulders and turquoise hills. Mrs Lee is waiting on the porch, the envelope in her hand. A shawl around her shoulders.

Yoonoh turns the unopened letter around in his hands. It’s addressed to Lee Minhyung. The post stamp has a woodpecker. He pockets it. “Is your son not at home?”

Mrs Lee replies, “I’m afraid he isn’t. He’s at camp Ivanhoe. Do you know where it is?”

/

Lee still hasn’t lowered the gun. Minhyung turns to look at Donghyuck like summer days and grabs his wrist and starts running like hell. The carpet of leaves under their feet is slick and perilous and Donghyuck really wishes he hadn’t just put on woollen socks inside his thin church shoes and called it good enough.

Donghyuck doesn’t know why, but none of the scouts follow or fire after them. Like giving them a head start. Maybe the scouts have some kind of meagre respect towards their leader, after all.

Minhyung doesn’t stop until they’re far, far away, by the foot of a cliff. Donghyuck spits on the ground. The rock glistens. Their foreheads. Their breaths. Their palms. Moisture.

“Where have you been sleeping?” Minhyung asks.

“In the little cove without a name,” Donghyuck says. Then, he elaborates, “The one in the north. Know it?”

Minhyung nods. He pulls a compass and a map out of his pocket. He sets them down on the ground and taps on the mile 3.25 tidal inlet with his index finger. Black crescents of the moon under his fingernails. “This one?”

Donghyuck looks at Minhyung taking the direction with his compass. Says, “Yeah. That one.”

It’s a long walk. When they stop on the white sand of the cove, cheeks and noses red, the sun’s about to fall off the sky. Little seashells crunch under their feet. Music boxes of the sea broken by their heels as they totter to the little tent Donghyuck stole from his foster father’s garage.

“A bit poorly pitched,” Minhyung comments, grinning.

“Do it better yourself, then,” Donghyuck grumbles.

So Minhyung does. Donghyuck sits on the sand, smoking a cigarette and watching him. Icy black waves try to swallow the rocks until their jaws unhinge and fall away.

/

At camp Ivanhoe, Yoonoh finds a vigilant group of scouts. They’re sitting in a circle by a bush of cow parsnips. Clutching various weapons that don’t fit their puerile faces and slender necks.

The scouts turn to look at Yoonoh silently. “I’m looking for your scoutmaster,” Yoonoh says.

“Aren’t you too young to be a police officer?” one of the scouts asks. It’s true they aren’t all that younger than Yoonho.

Yoonoh sighs. “Maybe. But I’m all this island’s got. And I need to find Lee Minhyung.”

The kid with a lighter laughs like a violin and replies, “You’re out of luck. He bolted with Donghyuck.”

/

The tent is barely big enough for two. Since Minhyung didn’t fathom he would run off with Donghyuck when he first went looking for his patrol in the woods, he doesn’t have his sleeping bag with him. So they squeeze into Donghyuck’s and hope it won’t rip at the seams. Donghyuck half under Minhyung and dreaming.

Donghyuck emerges from slumber with a soft inhale. Morning has painted its first pale layer of light over the tent’s wall. Minhyung looks at him. Eyes watery with fatigue.

“Did you not sleep at all?” Donghyuck croaks. He reaches up to cup Minhyung’s cheek. Wonders if it’s okay.

Minhyung blows a breath against the heel of Donghyuck’s palm. Syrupy and somnolent. “Can’t.”

“Why? Was I moving around or snoring or—”

“No,” Minhyung cuts in urgently, “not at all. I’m just afraid I’ll hurt you. If I fall asleep.”

Donghyuck strokes Minhyung’s head, running his thumb along the helix of his ear, the way his mother used to brush the remnants of insomnia out of the ringlets of his hair. Minhyung closes his red-rimmed eyes and drifts off and Donghyuck slides out of the sleeping bag and walks out into the blue morning.

/

Minhyung and Donghyuck’s letters are few and far between, but true in the way their barest forms exist only on paper. They lick each envelope shut carefully, sealing their own mouths with their tongues. Minhyung uses smooth, lavender-scented paper his godmother gave to him for Christmas. Donghyuck only has the back of grocery lists and pages ripped out of his school notebooks to write on.

Donghyuck guesses already from the scrambling, dense handwriting that the letter he gets on a stormy summer day has been written somewhere between sleep and wakefulness. Night and morning. Questions and answers.

 _Dear Donghyuck_ , it reads, _I accidentally built a fire in the yard while sleepwalking. I have no memory of this, but when I woke up my pyjamas smelled of smoke. My mother is furious, she…_

It takes a few days, but when Donghyuck replies, there’s a little splatter of the apple juice he threw in his classmate’s face over the _I hope you’re okay. Yours, Donghyuck._

/

“Come on,” Donghyuck urges, pulling off his sweater and unbuckling his belt. The air stings at his tender ribs and blue bruises. Minhyung’s gaze lingers on the blemishes on his torso, but Donghyuck doesn’t bother explaining again.

Minhyung slept through the morning, late into the golden afternoon. He sits by the tent’s door, hugging his knees to his chest. Donghyuck pulls his socks and shoes off and runs to Minhyung. He repeats what he said, pulling Minhyung upright.

“I don’t know,” Minhyung protests, although he’s already stripping to his underwear, “the water looks cold.”

“And you call yourself a scout,” Donghyuck says, clicking his tongue against the roof of his mouth.

That riles Minhyung up enough to force him into the water, but not any deeper than thigh-high. Donghyuck knocks him over into the waves. Once he emerges, Minhyung sweeps his fringe out of his eyes and forces Donghyuck’s head under the surface. He lets go after a couple of seconds. Donghyuck heaves and splutters. He wades towards Minhyung, who obviously thinks he’s out for revenge because he grins and takes a step back.

There’s no way Minhyung doesn’t see it coming. He has a full five seconds to move away. Instead, he lets Donghyuck press a kiss to the corner of his mouth. Donghyuck doesn’t know what he expected. Singing angel choirs, maybe, or some heavenly light. His mouth’s only ever known knuckles and elbows.

But there’s only Minhyung’s broad frame to Donghyuck’s long limbs. They’re both thin. Both digging their toes into the seabed. Each wave trying to climb higher up their thighs than the previous one.

Donghyuck paddles back to the shore and lays down on the sand. His chest full. Rising heavily. Minhyung eventually follows, towering over Donghyuck. Behind his head, the sun’s receding towards the west. Sunlight falling off his shoulders in cascades, he says, “I killed Snoopy.”

/

Minhyung wakes up on dewy grass. He’s so used to opening his eyes somewhere completely different from where he closed them he just sighs and looks at the pale sky. Wonders if he set something on fire in his sleep.

He turns his head and almost whimpers. The dog’s glassy eyes stare at him. Its throat’s open. Red. Minhyung vomits in the bush of cow parsnips.

No one’s awake. Jeno hasn’t blown the horn yet. Minhyung grabs a shovel from the equipment tent and digs a hole in the middle of the field right next to the camp. The earth is moist and musty. Black.

/

Donghyuck lifts a hand to shield his eyes from the sun. “What?” he asks, even though he heard it perfectly well.

“In my sleep. I—I’d never killed anything or anyone while sleepwalking before—or. Or, what if I did? I’m so scared, Donghyuck,” Minhyung blurts in one big breath. Eyes wide. Shoulders peppered with goose bumps.

Donghyuck springs up onto his feet. More despaired than angry, he says, “Do you realise your patrol was ready to lynch me over that?”

Minhyung twists his fingers, muttering sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry under his breath.

/

“Where are we going?” Yoonoh asks, taking long strides to keep up with the scouts. He drove to the camp right in time to catch the patrol parading off into the misty woods. Singing some march song.

Halfway through the explanation, the boy with a bat shushes the youngest of the pack with a sharp hiss. All four boys stop in their tracks and crouch slightly, like animals. Weapons poised. There’s footsteps. Leaves rustling under boots.

Minhyung steps into view. Eyes large, confused, guilty. Sand stuck to his cheek and in the creases of his clothes. Arms full of clothes and some other fabric. He lifts his hands and says, “Hi there,” as if he wasn’t gone for two nights.

“Where’s Donghyuck?” the youngest asks, lowering his bow and tucking his arrow back under his belt.

Minhyung looks thoroughly helpless. He rakes his hands through his hair and rubs at his eyes. He doesn’t know.

Yoonoh steps into the circle of scout boys and lays a hand on Minhyung’s shoulder. “I have something for you,” he says, glancing around swiftly. Lowering his voice a fraction because all of the younger scouts seem to tighten their grip on their weapons at the mere mention of the name, he continues, “from Donghyuck.”

/

“Where are you going?” Minhyung rasps, because he’s just woken up to Donghyuck leaving.

Before Donghyuck’s voice carried Minhyung over the threshold of slumber, they talked about running away. Taking the ferry from the easternmost tip of the island, to the main land, and catching a bus or train or even hitchhiking to the dry red mountains in the heartland. Together. Not like Donghyuck’s doing it, stooping in the low tent. Head rubbing against the ceiling. Hair full of static. Alone.

Donghyuck crouches back down. He brushes his thumb over Minhyung’s eyebrow and kisses him cool and briny. Minhyung’s pretty sure no girl he’ll ever meet at a dance could make his eyebrows furrow and his body leap up for more like this. He clutches Donghyuck’s shoulders. Donghyuck smiles against his jaw.

Donghyuck holds Minhyung by the back of the neck and presses his lips to his throat. Minhyung laughs. When he lies back down, he can feel a little love-lilac bruise germinating under his skin. Donghyuck’s gaze is so unbearably light on him.

Donghyuck kisses Minhyung again and gets up. “Don’t worry, I’m just going out for a smoke,” he says, then leaves.

/

Yoonoh nods. Minhyung’s sitting in the passenger seat of the police car, shins propped up against the dashboard. The unopened letter poised on his knees.

“And when you woke up he was gone?” Yoonoh asks carefully.

Minhyung hums. He picks up the letter and examines it against the light. It’s heavy, creamy paper. Probably stolen from the stationery store. “How did you get this?”

“Your mother gave it to me yesterday morning,” Yoonoh explains.

Minhyung gives Yoonoh a hesitant look, so Yoonoh gets out of the car and sits on the hood. He pulls his cap with island sheriff embroidered on the front off his head, ruffling his hair matted by it. A scout, who’s now abandoned his nailed bat somewhere, stalks to Yoonoh. Yoonoh’s heard the others call him Renjun.

“Does he know anything about Donghyuck’s whereabouts?” Renjun asks, each word calculated carefully. He stands slightly on the tips of his toes, heels hovering over the ground. His little snaggletooth cuts the edge of his severe manner.

Yoonoh lifts an eyebrow. “No, he doesn’t. Why are you so pressed to find Donghyuck, anyway?”

“He did something to our dog,” Renjun responds gravely. “We will not let him get away with it.”

“It might be he didn’t. See, there have been reports of a fox going around slaughtering people’s pets and poultry,” Yoonoh says. “And it’s awfully futile to kill a human over a dog, don’t you think?”

Renjun makes a displeased face but doesn’t say anything. The other scouts are playing some childish game of tag. The tents’ strings vibrate with their laughter. Inside the car, Minhyung’s staring at the ceiling. A gust of wind sneaks in through the narrowly open window and pulls on the corners of the letter in his lap.

/

By the time Donghyuck lights a cigarette, he doesn’t see the glimmer of the ocean flashing between the trees anymore. He has a little torch to reveal the tree roots to him before he breaks his ankles over them. His backpack feels much lighter without the tent and the warm sweater and the trousers and his heart and the socks and the lip balm he left behind for Minhyung. But he did take Minhyung’s campaign hat.

Donghyuck’s chest is still hurting. Like someone’s stuffed cotton down his throat until he’s about to burst from the inside. But he pushes the hat off his brow and walks on, hoping his compass won’t side with fate and lead him right back to Minhyung.

/

_Dear Minhyung,_

_It is a blue night. Yerim has an eyeshadow colour called midnight. She only wears it when she sneaks out at night to have fun with older girls. The baker does not give her permission, but she climbs out through her window anyway. The sky right now is that colour and she has just scraped her knee because she landed so clumsily. I fetched a band-aid and threw it to her through the window. If it was any other night, I would have let her complain until she would have eventually gone away, but I don’t want that to be her last memory of me. She is despicable, insupportable, but she has the right to torment me. Her mother died giving birth to her, did you know that? Her father left to the sea and never came back. I thought about that when she poured glue into my school shoes on Wednesday. Then, I poured her favourite perfume down the sink._

_See, it goes both ways, because my parents are gone too. I really hope they hadn’t gone rowing. They were drunk out of their minds, and I was too young to stop them. My mother was a pretty inadequate parent, but I miss her. My father, too. But they left our house and pulled our little boat out of the reed bed and drowned. I imagine they died laughing. They were so very inebriated._

_On the way home from school today I got surrounded by a bunch of boys. They were from my class. I believe some of them are also in the patrol you lead. Huang and Lee, am I right? I have punched or kicked or even bit (yes, one of them made the grave mistake of trying to make Yerim dance with him when she would have preferred to stay with Seulgi at a dance once) all of them at least once, so they have a perfectly valid reason to hate me. I guess you figured that out already, though._

_Two of them forced me to the ground and spat on me. The rest kicked me in the sides and the legs and the arms—but never anywhere near the face. I imagine they thought themselves to be courteous. Then, they all sat on me. I felt as though I was about to get minced into the pavement._

_I have never in my life been scared of people. That is merely because people have probably been scared of me. But in that moment, I couldn’t even say anything to them. I thought I was going to break and bleed on that patch of pavement around the corner from the jeweller’s._

_Thinking about it now, I should have got that thorough and brutal kind of beating years ago. It was a long overdue blood-cleansing, I reckon. What has kept the guys from doing it earlier is beyond me. Maybe as an orphan, I have been under the protection of my parents’ foolish and unnecessary deaths until now._

_Therefore I have chosen to leave this island. The time mother and father bought for me has run out. I will stay somewhere safe and secluded until everyone forgets everything about me, and then I will take the ferry to the main land._

_I am sorry I did not tell you. In fact, I didn’t know I was leaving before Lee spat in my face, either. I am also sorry for not asking you to come with me, even though one of the only things which really pain me about leaving is doing it without you. You are very dear to me, I hope you understand that._

_You are, however, bestowed with a future with no place for me. I talk too much with my knuckles. I do not even possess a dream. You are handsome and proper and diligent. You will find a nice girl to marry, I am sure, and I will be a better person somewhere far away. But I must do it by myself._

_I do not blame Huang or Lee. I do not blame my foster father. I do not blame my parents. I do not blame you. I by myself have given everyone all the reasons to hate me. It is no one’s fault except my own._

_I wish you the best of luck. Be responsible, as painfully boring as you have always been and happy. In that order._

_Truly yours,_

_Donghyuck_

_P.S. I took plenty of money from my foster father’s safe and nicked the sharpest scissors Yerim had. I will be fine._

/

Yoonoh gets back into the car. “Do you want to tell me what the letter said? It might help us find him,” he tries.

Without tearing his gaze from the headliner, Minhyung shakes his head. Instead he asks, voice the tiniest bit chipped at the edges, “Would you happen to have a pen and some paper?”

Yoonoh points at the glovebox. Minhyung opens it with the slightest of tremors pulling at his hands, then digs out a notepad and a fountain pen. He starts writing against the dashboard. Slow and pained.

Yoonoh isn’t stupid.

/

The previous police officer died suddenly. Next to his fleshy, motionless body slumped over the steering wheel of his car, there were at least ten empty bottles of coca cola. Yoonoh, whose way home had happened to coincide with the officer’s last journey’s end, gazed at the corpse without any special feeling. He didn’t know.

On basis of his distant relation to the deceased officer, Yoonoh was appointed the new island police. On the island, things happen like that. Like Minhyung only became a scout master because there was no one else to do it and he looks swell enough in a uniform. Like Donghyuck only became the scapegoat because his parents’ death wasn’t exactly heroical and he constantly gets up in danger’s face.

The police station sits on a pier. Every morning, an old fisherman with sun-hardened skin comes to the pier and casts his fishing line miserably close. But he doesn’t mind not getting many fish. He’s still seated there when Yoonoh stumbles out of his caravan parked on the beach in the late afternoon.

“Sleep well, officer?” the man asks, driving his hook through a squirming worm.

Yoonho shrugs his pyjamas off. “Yes, I did. How are you?” He leaves his clothes on the sand and walks onto the pier. The chipping wood is warm and rough under the soles of his feet. He stretches his hands above his heads, bends his knees a little and jumps. The waters parts like dark bluish green, mouldy butter under a knife.

“Wonderful,” the fisherman replies, watching Yoonoh swim a round and then hoist himself back up onto the pier. Yoonoh lets the sunlight rub over his skin with its itchy towel. The fisherman continues, “Time to make your rounds, eh?”

So Yoonoh gets up as soon as the back of his knees are dry. He puts on his uniform and gets into the car he inherited from his predecessor a week after he gave up the ghost on the steering wheel. He starts from the hills.

Minhyung’s sitting between Donghyuck’s legs and vice versa. Resting his forehead on Donghyuck’s shoulder. The shadow of a humongous oak tree trembling over them.

That’s how Yoonoh finds them. And he’s kind of okay with it. Two boys in love will never rip him away from his lethargic cycle of waking up, drinking a cup of coffee, going for a swim, making his rounds, eating a meagre dinner, listening to records until the small hours, drinking a glass of whiskey and going back to sleep.

Truth is, he’s twenty-one years old and beyond caring. Beyond numb. And once again, he doesn’t know.

/

Minhyung wakes up on cold sand. He spits a few grains out of his mouth and turns around onto his stomach, then rises onto all fours. He presses his forehead against the sand, praying that Donghyuck isn’t lying next to him. Eyes defunct like orbs of amber driven into his skull. Throat torn open in the same spot where the purple ghost of his love stains Minhyung’s neck.

Minhyung breathes a sigh of relief when he turns his head and Donghyuck isn’t there. But his relief is short-lived because Donghyuck isn’t in the tent, either.

Minhyung waits for a couple of hours. He sits on the beach. Fingers crossed until they hurt. Knees and elbows bruising with worry. But Donghyuck never shows.

Minhyung packs the sleeping bag and dismantles the tent and folds the clothes Donghyuck left for him. Then, he walks off into the forest.

/

Minhyung refuses to go home or stay in camp Ivanhoe, so Yoonoh lets him sleep in the backseat of his car. Yoonoh is perched in the caravan’s doorway, drawing idle patterns into the sand with the tip of his shoe.

Suddenly, there’s a thump. Minhyung’s head hitting the ceiling of the car. His shins thudding heavily against the seats. The car’s door opening. Yoonoh stands up and walks to Minhyung. But Minhyung’s eyes aren’t open. His shoulders squared and face tilted slightly up towards the moon.

“Minhyung—” Yoonoh starts, but Minhyung swivels around and starts wobbling somewhere. His knees don’t quite bend. His back is as if someone’s put a metal rod right through his spine.

Yoonoh follows. Minhyung walks straight through bushes and little brooks and a couple people’s backyards. It’s like he’d swallowed his compass. And Yoonoh knows it’s N, E, Dh and W now—might have been for some time already.

Finally, Minhyung trips over a rock. He lies there for a few seconds, face buried in a bed of moist moss. He breathes quietly into the green ground, shoulder blades opening and closing like wings’ stumps. Then, he gets up and sits on his scraped knees, wiping the sleep off his cheeks. Yoonoh thinks, it must be now. When Minhyung’s still in the sticky marshes of subconscious longing. Now, now, now.

“Where’s Donghyuck?” Yoonoh asks.

“The harbour,” Minhyung replies and realises exactly fourteen seconds too late. He bites his tongue.

On the way back, Minhyung skirts every bush and jumps over every brook and sidesteps every garden’s lawn carefully. Gone is the iron rod from his vertebrae and his compass’s frantic certainty.

“You know,” Yoonoh utters, his hands in his pockets, “I’m not going to make Donghyuck go back to his foster family. They wouldn’t take him back, anyway. But letting him run away won’t cut it.”

Minhyung eyes Yoonoh through the hundreds of chasms of darkness between them. “You think he would be happy here?”

Yoonoh shrugs. “He could be.”

/

Donghyuck sits on a dock. The next ferry to the main land is in the forenoon, so he waits. Mist glides over the water and steals the boats away from it. He wonders if Minhyung ever got his letter after all. If he understands why he’s leaving.

Donghyuck resents Minhyung for killing the dog and finding him and holding him. Otherwise, he’s sure he would already be sitting in a bus, red dust swirling around the tires. The main land. The mountains. Nothing could reach him anymore.

Light floods the back of Donghyuck’s neck. It falls into his lap and tips over his knees, off the dock. He turns to look.

/

“Are you even old enough to adopt him?” Minhyung asks, disbelieving.

Yoonoh turns the key in the ignition. The car coughs like an asthmatic. Pushing down on the pedal and turning the steering wheel with purpose he hasn’t felt in a long time, Yoonoh replies, “I’m twenty-one years old. It should be possible.”

Minhyung hums. “He’s going to give you hell over it,” he says, almost smiling.

Yoonoh chuckles and murmurs, “I’m sure.”

/

Renjun gets up to pee. He stands by a tree and fumbles with his trousers. Jeno sidles up to him, bumping their shoulders together gently.

Morning’s seeping in through the world’s stomas. Renjun watches the darkness peeling off the sky one layer at a time, like shedding skins until there’s nothing left. Says, “We’ve been a bunch of assholes to Donghyuck, haven’t we?”

Jeno tilts his head in a reluctantly agreeing manner.

/

Due to the car’s headlights, Donghyuck doesn’t see the police officer before he’s kneeling next to him. Jung Yoonoh lays a hand on his shoulder and he almost falls off the dock in surprise. Yoonoh’s badge glints in the light.

“I’m not going back to the baker’s,” Donghyuck stutters.

Yoonoh snorts. “You aren’t, yeah, but—hold on. Minhyung! Turn those headlights off, please.” Donghyuck tenses at the name but can’t see beyond the lights. Once the lights fizzle out, Yoonoh goes on, “What I was going to say is, you’re not boarding that ferry either.”

Donghyuck fixes his gaze on his palms. “Why’s that?”

“I’m going to adopt you. Or, well, sort of. I know I’m only a few years older than you, but we’ll make it work,” Yoonoh says.

“And if I’ve made my mind up on leaving this island?” Donghyuck asks. He hears Minhyung shuffling on his feet.

Yoonoh sighs. “You shouldn’t. When you’re old enough, yes, but not now.”

Minhyung walks over to Donghyuck. His socks are bunched around his ankles and his shoes are wet. He crouches, waiting for Donghyuck to look up. “You should take up his offer,” Minhyung murmurs. “I think you would maybe be doing him a favour, too. It’ll be good for you.”

“Do you swear?” Donghyuck asks, hanging on to his very last bit of stubbornness.

Minhyung smiles. “On my scout’s honour.”

Donghyuck nods and sheds five tears into Minhyung’s campaign hat. Minhyung kisses him behind the ear. Yoonoh doesn’t mind.

/

_Dear Donghyuck,_

_I do not know if I am supposed to say this but I think I am in love with you. Whether God sends me to hell for it or not, I do not think I care anymore._

_Therefore, I am letting you go. I did not understand why you ran away from home at first, but when officer Jung gave me your letter after you left last night (I will have you know I did not appreciate you claiming you were going out for a smoke when I could never see you again. It was very cruel, even from you), I got it. Life is not good for you here, so you want to find somewhere else. I understand that. Although, I do regret that I wasn’t able to negate your hardships enough to keep you with me._

_Nothing was your fault, though. Jeno and Renjun shouldn’t have done what they did. Your foster father should have been kinder to you. People should have tried to understand you instead of berating you._

_I overheard officer Jung telling Renjun about a fox which has been going around the island killing people’s pets and poultry. He thinks that might have been what got Snoopy. I’m starting to think it, too. Not that it matters anymore. I can’t help feeling like you were about to stay with me in the cove after all, until I mentioned it._

_I wish there was a place where we could both stay and be content, like that tidal inlet, but I reckon such a place doesn’t really exist. We will just have to find our happiness separately. I might not be at odds with it yet, but I will be._

_I wish you the best of luck. Be funny, cocky and happy. In that order._

_Only yours,_

_Minhyung_

_P.S. You did not provide me with an address to send this to, so I am holding on to this. I hope it will end up in your hands through some odd succession of events._

/

Donghyuck comes home from school and throws his satchel to the ground right away. He leaves his uniform on the sand and races Yoonoh, who’s just woken up, to the end of the pier. They jump as far as they can, then fall into the awaiting arms of the sea.

Minhyung sits next to the old man and helps him cast his fishing line. He watches Yoonoh and Donghyuck splashing around, doing doggy paddle and backstroke and front crawl. Their pale forms blurred by the water from the neck down.

Donghyuck isn’t patient enough to let the sun dry him. He gets a towel from the caravan and wipes himself and puts on his boxers and goes sit next to Minhyung, while Yoonoh simply stretches out on the pier and waits. Minhyung wraps an arm around Donghyuck’s waist and pinches him.

Yoonoh takes Minhyung and Donghyuck along on his rounds. They sit in the back of the car, one’s feet in the other’s lap. They drive over the hills and Yoonoh tilts the rear-view mirror away quietly.

The scouts have long since abandoned their weapons. Donghyuck’s knuckles are seldom bruised anymore. Minhyung still hasn’t got his hat back. Yoonoh finally knows.

**Author's Note:**

> adoption doesn't work like that but ay fuck the cops  
> thanks for reading <3


End file.
